Back Door Logic

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Steve S.

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“Guns kill people; people don’t kill people.” (After you read this, you have to let it cook a little in your mind - could make for a counterintuitive anti-anti-gun slogan).
 
I saw in the comments following a YouTube video a conversation that went along the lines of:

A: "If guns don't kill people, why do we give people guns when we send them to war? Why not just send the people?"

B: "We could, if the enemy would do so as well."

C: "Why not just send the guns?"

A (in typical at-a-loss-for-further-argument style): "You people are sick in the head."
 
Well, in the case of people killing people, there are more people killed by unarmed attackers (500 to 800 a year) than by attackers with all types of rifles (250 to 300 a year with ARs a tiny subset); that is clearly people killing people. Even where a killer selects a weapon deadlier than hands, arms, legs or feet, the killing is by the killer (actor) with a weapon (means), not by the weapon itself.

Criminologist Marvin Wolfgang personally hated guns. He stated if he were Mustapha Mond, dictator of "Brave New World", he would ban all guns. He also studied 588 homicides in detail, going into the background of murderer and victim, circumstances, etc. and concluded:
More than the availability of a shooting weapon is involved in homicide. Pistols and revolvers are not difficult to purchase (on the street) ... The type of weapon used appears to be, in part, the culmination of assault intentions or events and is only superficially related to causality. To measure quantitatively the effect of the presence of firearms on the homicide rate would require knowing the number and type of homicides that would not have occurred had not the offender -- or, in some cases, the victim -- possessed a gun. Research would require determination of the number of shootings that would have been stabbings, beatings, or some other method of inflicting death had no gun been available. It is the contention of this observer that few homicides due to shootings could be avoided merely if a firearm were not immediately present, and that the offender would select some other weapon to achieve the same destructive goal. Probably only in those cases where a felon kills a police officer, or vice versa, would homicide be avoided in the absence of a firearm.
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And until he read Gary Kleck's National Self Defense Survey, Wolfgang did not seriously consider the deterrence effect of firearms in the hands of intended victims. Wolfgang observed that most firearms used in shooting murders were illegally obtained. Even well-established gun control advocate Robert Sherrill later acknowledged you could eliminate most legal gun possession and transfer and miss the pool of crime guns. His nightmare was a ban resulting in millions of previously legal guns dumped into the black market.
 
Carl N. Brown said:
His nightmare was a ban resulting in millions of previously legal guns dumped into the black market.
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Exactly. We don't hear much about the adverse consequences of gun control. It's my contention that gun bans don't physically eliminate guns -- they just drive them underground. This converts erstwhile law-abiding citizens into potential felons, with an attitude of contempt for the law in general. And, certainly, organized crime will step in to supply the underground gun market.

I would like to see data about the actual rates of compliance under draconian gun laws such as those in California, New York, New Jersey, etc. I suspect that voluntary compliance is quite low, but this is obviously difficult to determine. We can see that in Europe, with its strict gun laws, criminals and terrorists don't seem to be having any problem getting guns. Maybe all that these laws do is deter rank amateurs who are not at all plugged into the underground gun system. That's not much of a tradeoff.
 
We should start a movement for 'Common sense smartphone control' being as they kill perhaps 100X more teenagers than guns do every year. Ban the possession and ownership of phones until 21...same age as the proposed gun bills. 'It's for the children!' 'If it saves just ONE life....it's worth it'. Makes total sense to me.:) Or....is the furor to ban guns something more devious than protecting our children? Methinks.
 
RecoilRob said:
We should start a movement for 'Common sense smartphone control' being as they kill perhaps 100X more teenagers than guns do every year. Ban the possession and ownership of phones until 21...same age as the proposed gun bills. 'It's for the children!' 'If it saves just ONE life....it's worth it'. Makes total sense to me.:) Or....is the furor to ban guns something more devious than protecting our children? Methinks.
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The difference is that smart phones are popular among urban hipsters. If guns were equally popular among urban hipsters, we wouldn't be seeing these pushes for gun control.

Guns are a stand-in for an underlying cultural conflict. The urban elites don't hate guns as much as they do gun owners, or at least what they perceive to be that cultural cohort. This is why that other thread on gun owners' image is so important. If we could convert at least some urban sophisticates -- "leftists" -- that would go a long way towards safeguarding the RKBA.
 
AlexanderA said:
Guns are a stand-in for an underlying cultural conflict
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I see that where I live. I live in a rural area with lots of pavement dwellers moving into my neighborhood. I have neighbors that shoot on their property, all legal with the county code. We have a neighborhood forum called Nextdoor that the locals post on. https://nextdoor.com/. Lots of people complain about the sound of gunfire, it disturbs them. When I first moved here 23 years ago I hardly ever heard it. Occasionally a neighbor would shoot a squirrel, rat or crow but that was the extent of it. I was guilty of that myself. Now I hear it almost everyday. People shooting on their property for recreation. Some people are moving here to get away from the city restrictions and some want to bring the restrictions with them.

They've brought the cultural conflict with them. I just don't know how to respond when my new neighbor asks me what I think about that. I just tell them I'm a gun owner but I shoot at a private range....... a lot.
 
CoalTrain49 said:
I see that where I live. I live in a rural area with lots of pavement dwellers moving into my neighborhood. I have neighbors that shoot on their property, all legal with the county code. We have a neighborhood forum called Nextdoor that the locals post on. https://nextdoor.com/. Lots of people complain about the sound of gunfire, it disturbs them. When I first moved here 23 years ago I hardly ever heard it. Occasionally a neighbor would shoot a squirrel, rat or crow but that was the extent of it. I was guilty of that myself. Now I hear it almost everyday. People shooting on their property for recreation. Some people are moving here to get away from the city restrictions and some want to bring the restrictions with them.

They've brought the cultural conflict with them. I just don't know how to respond when my new neighbor asks me what I think about that. I just tell them I'm a gun owner but I shoot at a private range....... a lot.
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I'm beginning to see the same thing here. It's 7 miles to the nearest town to my east and 15 to the west same north and south. I thought we would be safe here but after 23 years, the two biggest tracts of land near me are full of survey stakes. I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with neighbors, but I do hope they don't mind gunfire. A day around here that you don't hear someone shooting on their property is odd. Most of the times I go out back to shoot, my neighbor, who is a quarter mile away will fire off a mag full just to say hi.
 
And I see that the murder rate in largely gun free London now exceeds that of New York City.
 
My home state, Utah is practically awash in legal guns, and probably some illegal ones as well. Our homicide rate is very close to that of Malaysia, where the law requires an automatic death penalty if you are found in possession of a firearm and a single round of ammunition.
 
The biggest problem with anti gun people is they don’t listen to logic
I have a BIL who gets physically ill at the sight of a handgun. He won’t come to my house, he would faint
It is about an agenda. Get rid of guns and the world will cease to be violent. Really?
 
JONWILL said:
I have a BIL who gets physically ill at the sight of a handgun.
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I had a dog like that. He was a German Shepherd that I got from the pound. Overall he was a great dog; but he had a terrible gun and loud noise phobia. On the fourth of July he would go hide in the bathtub.

If he saw a pistol he would actively try to hide. It didn't matter the way it was held or the context. He knew what they were and didn't want to be around. I end up making sure I always concealed for him.

In all other ways he was a great dog and after I got him, as an adult dog, he went on to live seventeen more years. He was a great, and constant, part of my daughters childhood, but if I was going shooting I took the other dog.
 
AlexanderA said:
I would like to see data about the actual rates of compliance under draconian gun laws such as those in California, New York, New Jersey, etc. I suspect that voluntary compliance is quite low, but this is obviously difficult to determine.
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There are just starting to be some studies sneaking out into public view on non-compliance in the NE US.
There are hard-to-find but not hidden observations on Australian non-compliance, too.
Australia turns out to have been between 15 and 20 percent compliant; and 80/20 split metropolitan/country. The folks in Oz are laid back about such things. Other than that their cities & metro areas have increasingly larger communities of criminal types who ignore all laws.

There was a NY state study that was speculating on an alleged 11% compliance rate (did not specify it that was all of SAFe, or just specific parts thereof) and what future implications that would have for statewide law enforcement.

One of the the things I keep seeing in over-built metro areas is an utter indifference to laws, an anarchy of indolence. How those who intend to control populations which ignore said controls may become an issue. Which is complicated for "our" culture, we have been conditioned to be law-abiding above all else, lest we loose our privileges.
 
RecoilRob said:
We should start a movement for 'Common sense smartphone control' being as they kill perhaps 100X more teenagers than guns do every year. Ban the possession and ownership of phones until 21...same age as the proposed gun bills. 'It's for the children!' 'If it saves just ONE life....it's worth it'. Makes total sense to me.:) Or....is the furor to ban guns something more devious than protecting our children? Methinks.
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In the same year 17 people were killed by an AR in Parkland School. 1.7 MILLION died from heart disease, heart attacks, Type II Diabetes, and respiratory disease.
None of these same folks who are worried about the deaths of a few unfortunates are in any rush to educate their children about, or
legislate the saturated fat, HFCS, processed sugar, or cholesterol which is killing over 100,000 times as many people, annually. This isn't about "safety". It's about Nazi George finding a new poster boy, and anti-gun hysterics.
 
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entropy said:
"Hey do you want to rob that guy over there? Cops don't come 'round here no more."
"Naw, then I'd have to get up out of this easy chair."
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LoL.
Perhaps I should have phrased it as "indifferent anarchy"--where the purpetrators know that they are not obeying the law, but can't be bothered to care. There's also a twinge of "learned" ignorance; where people have no intention of learning what the laws are to even bother with obeying them.

All of which complicate how the rest of us, the cohort of the law-abiding, live our lives.
 
Steve S. said:
“Guns kill people; people don’t kill people.” (After you read this, you have to let it cook a little in your mind - could make for a counterintuitive anti-anti-gun slogan).
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There are millions of killing machines on American streets ...

you probably have one or two

in your garage!
 
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